The inversion changes common sentence order
to shift a word or group of words to the emphatic opening slot and to
add cadence.
So common is the experience of violent crime there
that it has specialized trauma clinics for victims.
Inverting the common order for The experience
of violent crime is so common there . . . puts so common
in front, giving it far more emphasis, and rightly submerges
the flat The experience of. . . .
Only in Asia are the Japanese doing well.
Only in the virtual world of her fiction could Austen
assert control.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the world of art,
where adversarial and subversive impulses have long been equated
with daring and creativity.